I had built things for a living.

I knew how to gather evidence, sequence it, and close a case, and I turned that skill, for the first time, on my own marriage.

Every folder I filled was also an apology to myself — proof that the woman I’d been talked out of trusting had been telling me the truth the whole time.

The most fitting part was that the man who handed me the master key was Warner himself.

Six months earlier — right when the late nights began — he’d developed a sudden concern about the art my father had given us and the contractors who came through the house, and insisted on a top-of-the-line smart-home system: networked locks, synced devices, a single hub tying it all together.

What he’d forgotten, or never respected, was that in the first year of his startup it was me who stayed up three nights rewriting the buggy code for the smart-home pitch his company took to its first investors.